Transcription: Mickey Roker - Essence

Here's Mickey Roker playing behind Donald Byrd on Essence, from Byrd's record Electric Byrd. It's vibey modal thing, in a slower 4/4 swing feel. It looks busy on the page, but this is mostly about groove, which is exceedingly deep. Tempo is about 88 bpm. 

I've gone a little nuts with the ghost note notation, but it's accurate— a lot of the comping activity is very soft. We can assume he's feathering the bass drum most of the time; I've only notated it where it's audible. Often with Roker that bass drum and snare drum are layered— he plays more unisons between the two drums than some of us do. 

In the comments someone mentioned an interview with Roker by Ethan Iverson, where he mentions the bass drum: 

EI:  When you are playing this fast, are you feathering the bass drum?

MR:  I almost always pat the bass drum because that’s the bottom of the drums.  I’m from the old school.  We used to play with no bass player and you had to pat the bass drum.  I am so used to that.  Sometimes I get too rambunctious with it but I don’t want to sound like Papa Joe Jones.  That’s why I like cats like Vernel Fournier. Nobody played that bass drum like that guy, you can hear it all the time. Some drummers tune their bass drum at too high a pitch and you can hear it but it gets on your nerves.  But if it is down and damp, it don’t get in the way of the bass player.

EI:  Do you think you are feathering here?

MR:  (listens to track [Three Little Words from Sonny Rollins On Impulse!]) No, I am not playing it here. Well, it’s hard to do that on something fast. You can’t do that on something that is extremely fast, unless you are playing without a bass player. (Listening to Sonny solo) Bad dude. Sonny Rollins!

His sound has a lot of bottom, with a large, muffled bass drum with a soft beater. The snare drum is tuned high and crispy. He's using a smaller, medium weight ride cymbal. Toms are medium size, with the top head tighter than the bottom... if you were wondering what that sounds like. 

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Transcription: Max Roach - Commutation

Here's Max Roach soloing with his left hand on Commutation, by J.J. Johnson, on Johnson's record First Place. A nice little self contained lesson item— there's some trading after this solo I didn't bother with.

Tempo is about 256, solo begins at 2:36. 

All the notes are played strongly, except the ones in parentheses. You'll notice not all the left hand stuff lines up perfectly with the cymbal. 

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Billy, switch to decaf babe

Getting cocky about my Musescore skills now, working on a Billy Cobham transcription, from Milt Jackson's album Sunflower. On the tune For Someone I Love, he does sort of an insane thing that almost crashes the album. The whole thing is really loose anyway. 

It happens after 4:45, during the trumpet solo: 

The actual transcription isn't complete, but here's a chunk of what he plays there: 

It's kind of cursed, I can count through the surrounding four measure phrase, but I can't get the last measure of the lick (not pictured) to resolve to 4/4. I blame Satan. 

Anyway, it's essentially an eight note pattern— two paradiddles (or paradiddle inversions, I don't know how he was thinking it) played on the hihat and snare drum, with feet added. Here are some possible inversions of it, in 16ths and triplets: 

Probably wise to learn the triplet form with hands only at first. I would want to know where the beginning of the eight note pattern falls, and each paradiddle, and the quarter note pulse— most importantly. Print it out and mark it up. Have fun, make some enemies, transcription coming soon. 

Transcription: Flight For Freedom - 01

OK, first complete transcription using Musescore, doing basically everything I need it to do for this site. Same recording I've been working with, Flight For Freedom by Oliver Nelson, from his record Skull Session, with Shelly Manne on drums. There was some dispute over whether it might have been Jim Gordon instead— we'll listen to one of his tracks from this record and check out the difference. 

This is the first minute of the track: 

I think he's using a four piece set plus a couple of concert toms. Mostly rides on the hihat, and he hits that ugly sounding swish cymbal quite often. And a crash cymbal, and he gets onto the ride cymbal at the end. Towards the end there's an unusual percussion sound I can't identify— I think he's playing it, but it could be someone else. He did quirky stuff like that at times. 

I really want my thing of notating half-open hihats with a tenuto mark to catch on. 

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Check out this track with Jim Gordon for comparison: 

Gordon hits harder, and is more aggressive, has a little sharper edge as a pure groove player— he seems more polished for this kind of music. Manne perhaps makes some more unusual choices, and is looser. They're both playing with a lot of forward momentum, I can't define the difference in quality of groove between them— Manne feels more “behind the beat”, but I'm not sure that's accurate at all. These are pretty nuanced impressions— they're both right on it, and have done a thousand sessions at this point, and are great. I enjoy Manne's playing more, he's warmer; Gordon is like a machine for this kind of playing. Not to say he sounds machine-like— do you dig the distinction? 

Feelings and impressions are hilarious— the words that come into your head may not be the actual thing happening on the recording. 

Listen to the rest of the record. Gordon plays on Skull Session, Dumpy Mama, and Japanese Garden.
 

Musescore notes: 

I've actually got it pretty close to where I want it, with the appearance of my template, and with using it. Two or three days of fussing around is actually not bad. 

Stem length
A lingering visual annoyance was the general stubby appearance of the notes. Under format > style > notes I saw that the shorten stems box was checked by default. I set the shortened stem length to 2.95sp— a little shorter than the default non-shortened stem length.  

Work modes

Navigating the various work modes are still a little obscure. I'll be hitting the Esc key often to switch from note entry mode— which doesn't always act the way I expect it to— to doing general stuff mode, where I can select measures and individual notes/articulations/text to do something with them.  

Note entry
Entering notes I use the keys a lot— hotkeys for the major drum sounds, arrows for navigating, number pad for rhythm value, + shift key to enter two notes in unison. For drum sounds that don't have a hotkey, I highlight the note/rest then mouse click on the thing I want in the key at the bottom of the window. For anything else I use the mouse to select it. 

Using the arrow keys, sometimes moving L-R selects the next note or articulation in a stack, sometimes not. 

Exporting
Really easy. For some reason my version of Finale sucked for exporting pdfs and jpegs— I had to use a pdf printer app (cutepdf, it's quite useful) to export to pdf, and then actually upload it to a web site (online2pdf.com, also quite useful) to convert it to a jpeg. Really dumb, and time consuming. 

Musescore has a nice friendly PUBLISH tab at the top of the screen that lets you output it any number of ways quickly and easily. 

Note entry is the main thing I need to get sorted out. I'll do a dedicated post for that in the next few days. Or not— I'm not sure how helpful my personal notes will be for people. Just read this page on entering notes and this page on navigating the document. 

Transcription: Jack Dejohnette - Tumbleweed - 01

Jack Dejohnette playing on Tumbleweed, from Michael Brecker's album Pilgramage— released a few months after his death. This is the type of playing much of what we do here is in service of. 

For a moment it sounded like the tune is in 7, but that's because the bass hits the root on the & of 4, and again on the 1, which is a little unusual. The transcription starts at the beginning of the track, and goes through the first time through the head— it repeats quite a few times. Tempo is 89 bpm. 

There's some random-ish hihat activity, which I usually don't include, except I think it's a co-equal voice with the ride cymbal, almost, as far as constructing the groove is concerned. In the last two measures there's some unusual bass drum activity, partly in unison with the hands, partially in the gaps. Not all of it is real audible, that interaction between the snare drum/tom tom and bass drum is a little buried, the statement there is about the hands.  

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Groove o' the day: Idris Muhammad boogaloo

A light little 60s pop beat by Idris Muhammad— I don't know what to call it, part boogaloo, part bossa nova— from George Benson's album Shape Of Things To Come. The whole record is like this, little 3-5 minute pop covers meant to go over on radio. If somebody turns on a pocket transistor radio on TV or in a movie, it's the kind of music you'd hear. Gilligan's Island, Hawaii 5-0, Thomas Crowne Affair, that type of thing. 

It begins very light, and gains some intensity throughout the arrangement— early on, very flat dynamics between all the parts of the set; more varied later. You'll hear more activity on the bass drum in the last minute or so— he plays it more strongly as well. 

The stuff I've transcribed covers almost 100% of what he actually plays— a couple of variations on the main beat, and he catches a rhythm figure at the end of the form. There is one more figure I didn't write out, you'll hear it. His only fill or embellishment is that little five stroke roll at the end of the measure, which he does quite often later in the track. 

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Transcription: Jeff Watts - Housed From Edward - 03

Part three of Branford Marsalis's Housed From Edward, from the album Trio Jeepy, with Jeff Watts on drums. Let's do the whole thing. This begins in the middle of Marsalis's solo at 3:21, and ends at the beginning of part 1 of this series, at 5:15.

Includes the very audacious/goofy displaced time feel, starting at bar 10. To me it takes exceptional self confidence, and faith in the other musicians, to try that on a recording session, but he had been doing some heavy rhythm stuff with Wynton Marsalis's band for several years before that, and clearly had it worked out. 

See also the quintuplet lick in bar 24— you can hear how the quintuplet cuts across the groove. It sounds off, but that's the nature of it. You could play that with a Chaffee-type sticking, RLBRL BRLBB. 

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Transcription: Jeff Watts - Housed From Edward - 02

Part two of Branford Marsalis's Housed From Edward, from the album Trio Jeepy, with Jeff Watts on drums. Let's do the whole thing. This begins at the top of Marsalis's solo, at 1:27. 
 

Most of the action is on the second page, enjoy. 

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Transcription: Jeff Watts - Housed From Edward - 01

Trio Jeepy by Branford Marsalis is a long time favorite album of mine, that was very influential on my concept of jazz. It's got Jeff Watts on drums and Milt Hinton on bass. This tune Housed From Edward was a big lesson on playing a form musically— 12 bar blues, in this case. 

This is the middle part, beginning at 5:15, where Branford takes a hike and Watts and Hinton play time— very lyrically— for several choruses. Tempo is about 122. 

Not much to say, the lesson is self-evident. There appear to be a lot of other transcriptions of this floating around— with videos of people playing them. 

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Transcription: Steve Gadd Afro 12/8

Here's Steve Gadd playing the whole first part of Full Compass, from George Benson's record Bad Benson— it's a fully arranged thing, with some drum breaks. It's an Afro-feel 12/8, modulating to 4/4 at the end. I could do a lot more with this track, but this is all I have time for today. 

As always we're struck by his incredibly deep time concept and execution— people should be thinking how do I sound that solid. 

The meter change happens in the middle of the last drum break, with the 8th notes in 12/8 becoming 16th notes in 4/4. The arranged four-8th note rhythm in bars 21-22 sets it up— the accent in that pattern, which is a cross rhythm in 12/8, is the new tempo in 4/4. The real tempo change is 12/8 = ~131 to 4/4 = ~103.   

In measure 18 there is a very Steve Gadd lick, I think I've written the rhythm correctly. Use a LRLR sticking, or go into the videos of him playing and see if he does this anywhere. There's something similar in the video at that link, but the bass drum is placed differently. Also visit the following link, where I've described how to work it up.  

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Transcription: Dannie Richmond - Straight, No Chaser

For my man Michael Griener in Berlin, some more Dannie Richmond, this time with Bennie Wallace, playing Straight No Chaser, by Thelonious Monk of course. From the 1981 album Bennie Wallace Plays Monk, on the Enja label. I transcribed the section where he plays duo with Wallace.

His playing here is very similar to some things we talk about on the site— you can see here what I meant calling him a modern player, in a way that clearly evolved on the gig, a la Roy Haynes or Mel Lewis, rather than in the practice room. 

It's a good natural example of the right hand lead thing, or “non-independent” playing— driven by the cymbal and bass drum, in broken, syncopated rhythms, with the snare drum filling in. Contrast that with a real grounded bebop kind of playing, with a steady cymbal and hihat rhythm, independent left hand, with bass drum feathering and making punctuations.   

Generally he'll lean into beats 2 and 4, often ending measures and phrases on the & of 4, rarely landing strongly on the 1. A lot of it is phrased in syncopated three beat ideas, usually contained within two measure phrases. 

The transcription begins at 2:35 in the track, and they play five 12-bar choruses before the band comes back in. The tempo is quarter note = 238—  a number deserving of some kind of special status, because I see it a lot. Seems to be about the bottom fast tempo. A good first number to have in mind when learning to play faster tempos.  

I notated three cymbals here, but it hardly matters. There is probably more snare drum activity than I was able to hear— he plays it very softly at times. It's also hard to hear the hihat for much of it, and I gave up on including it part way in. Where I did write it, it seems significant to the way he's phrasing that passage. 

I may do some further analysis of this— there are clearly some emergent rubadub type patterns in there, and some kind of Reed system to be gleaned from it.   

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Transcription: Chester Thompson - Gibraltar

Here's Chester Thompson playing on the tune Gibraltar, an extended groove number on the Weather Report album Black Market. The first thing I ever transcribed was Chester Thompson playing with Genesis, and I associate him with the kind of vibe there— very clean, professional, and deliberate. Here he sounds looser. 

This starts at 1:19, where the groove comes in— I bailed out just as he gets into a rather difficult to notate hihat groove— he's playing the hats while moving his foot a lot, resulting in a lot of irregular open sounds. Listen to the whole thing, it's pretty smoking by the end— and harder to separate the drums from the percussion to transcribe it. 

His backbeats and accents on the snare drum are played very strong, as rim shots. His left foot is pretty consistently playing 8th notes, though they're not always sounding real clearly— I didn't notate them. 

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Transcription: Charli Persip blues

Charli Persip playing a medium blues with Oliver Nelson: J&B, from Nelson's 1961 record Main Stem. Persip is really enjoyable to listen to, and has a little bit of Roy Haynes's edgy, modern thing happening. Good example of someone playing pretty modern in groove environment— he heard Idris Muhammad doing that before. If you swing and play good time you can get away with some stuff, you don't always have to slam pure context groove. 

The transcription covers his playing behind all the solos, starting at 1:25. Tempo is 106.  

Comping with the snare drum is fairly sparse; it seems like there's a little more activity there than is audible on the recording. He feathers the bass drum throughout, fairly audibly. He does a Roy Haynes-like thing of unisons in the hand vs. bass drum, like you see in measure 12. Hihat is consistently on 2/4 all the way, except he hits some accents on it, and sometimes drops it out when he's doing something complicated.

In the third chorus there's a double time 2 feel happening. Swing the 16ths there. Otherwise the 16ths are played evenly. 

He's using a small (18"?) bright, rather tinny ride cymbal— light with short decay. Not anybody's dream cymbal, but it sounds fine. You could get the same sound out of one of those old Ludwig/Paiste or Ludwig Standard cymbals.  

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Transcription: Billy Higgins - Blackjack

Billy Higgins playing on a funky vamp with some kicks in it, on Blackjack, from Donald Byrd's album of the same name. It sticks with the rhythm figure all the way through, and Higgins plays a lot of different stuff over it, rather than a repeating groove, so we get to see how he handles that. 

The transcription starts at 1:50, with the trumpet solo, ends at the piano solo. Tempo is 174, but the vamp suggests a half time feel. 

Here's the rhythm figure he's playing off of, usually filling to set up the syncopated accents starting at the beginning of the second measure, or on beats 4, 3, or 2 of the first measure:

It can make you kind of tense vamping relentlessly like this, if you don't vibe your way into some kind of groove with it. Which is not easy to find all the time. 

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Solo transcription: Billy Higgins - Third World

Here's a drum solo by Billy Higgins, from the tune Third World on Freddie Hubbard's album Bolivia. 

I've never played this tune and didn't count out the form. It starts with 8 bars of an ensemble figure with drum fills, which also occurs at the end of every solo chorus. The transcription begins with that section at the end of the piano solo, then Higgins's actual solo begins at bar 9. And you hear Higgins play the figure in the last 8 bars of his solo, then the band comes in with it on the head out. 

Snares off. 8th notes are swung, or half-swung. The bass drum is feathered through a good part of this; also there are some random hits I didn't notate. The hihat really isn't used at all, maybe one or two random notes I didn't notate. Look for places to add doubles when moving around the drums— like in measure 11, the first two triplet partials are played with the same hand. 

At measure 41 there's a little rhumba part that is difficult to notate There are a variety of sounds happening, and changes in pitch— which I didn't indicate. The regular Xs are rim clicks, the alternate Xs are played on the rim (possibly with the R instead of the L indicated), and the house top accents are rim shots. 

The sticking I've given should help you do something with it. Your left hand should be in rim click position with your palm resting on the drum, muffling it, and the right hand playing the head near the edge of the drum. I think the pitch changes result from moving the left hand across the drum— not from putting pressure on the head and changing its tension, but from changes in harmonics, from changing the position of his hand muffling the head. Experiment.  

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The solo starts at 5:18 in the track, or at - in the video of the full album below:

Max Roach / Stan Levey duo transcription: Milano Blues

Here's a composed drum duo played by Max Roach and Stan Levey, on their album Drummin' The Blues. They trade off on some parts, and play in unison on others. I believe the whole thing is pre-written— by Roach, from the sound of it— maybe the trading portions are improvised. 

Begins at 3:03 in the track, tempo is 127 bpm. 

They didn't just breeze in and do the session, they took some trouble to tune their drums the same, and select cymbals that sounded similar, and their execution is very tight— no flamming between players on the unison parts.

If you're able to loop the first four bars, you can hear that bars 1-2 are one player, bars 3-4 are the other, mainly from the pitch of the cymbal. As best I can tell, they're trading twos— soloing two measures each— in the first 8 bars, then playing together. This would be a good recital or jury piece for somebody. If I were going to perform it, I'd look into some creative ways of splitting it up between players, fill it out with some actual improvised trading. 

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Duo begins at 7:51 in the video below: 

From the zone: Danny Gottlieb solo break

Another archive item— lots of action around here right now, and not a lot of time to write. And I just found some more of my old writing. I wrote a lot of drum stuff in school. 

Here I've bashed out a transcription of a four bar drum break by Danny Gottlieb, on the title track from his album Aquamarine. By the end of it I clearly lost patience with it. 

I haven't listened to a ton of Danny Gottlieb. This was released in 1987, when fusion was easing into what people started calling “fuzak”, and this record was a little light for me. It's difficult for me now. But I made an effort to listen to it. The break happens at 2:56 in the recording. 

Philly Joe set ups

Here's a tune involving a lot of isolated kicks on the & of 2, where we get to hear a lot of different ways Philly Joe Jones sets them up— Blue Roz the Milt Jackson / Wes Montgomery album Bags Meets Wes. I've had a lot of people asking about kicks and set ups lately— here you go:

You can practice those as part of a two-measure phrase like this: 

Also move the kick over to the & of 3: 

Add two measures to the front of that if you need a longer cycle. Get the timing accurate from the cymbal accent to the following beat where you get back to the time— from the & of 2 to the 4 in the first example, from the & of 3 to the 1 in the second. They're easy spots to rush.  

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Transcription: Ahmad's Blues - fours

Hitting the ground running with this 2024 business, here's Philly Joe Jones trading fours with Red Garland on Ahmad's Blues, from the Miles Davis album Workin'. Joe sounds quite beautiful, hand made, and direct after a couple of days of listening to all that Dave Weckl polish. 

Tempo is about 118, and the first break is at 4:09.

Note that several of the breaks start with a partial measure— he gets into them before the 1. A lot of them are in double time; swing the 8ths on the first solo, on the rest of them any 8th notes will likely be straight. 

Some other unusual things: in the second break the triplets are played with the left hand, with the grace notes of the flams played with the right. On the 8th break he muffles the drum with his hand— you'll have to figure out a logical way to do that, that gets the sound. I offered a possible sticking on one of the sixtuplets, you could probably use that, or part of it, on many of them.   

Hey, how come I haven't put out a Philly Joe transcriptions e-book to go with all the others? 

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Transcription: Billy Hart - Don Is - 01

I've been listening to this record a lot in the last several months— Enjoy The View, by Bobby Hutcherson, with Billy Hart on drums, plus Joey de Francesco and David Sanborn. The tune is Don Is, and it's a blues, 12 bars long, played twice on the head in, which is what the transcription covers:

This will be useful mostly as a listening guide, so you can check out how Billy Hart handles this rhythmic tune. It's very interesting, I want to write more about it when I understand it. In the mean time we can just listen. See what's going on with those triplet fills. 

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